


Boys Don't Cry

by noodlerdoodler



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Decisions, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Claustrophobia, Drug Addiction, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Inspired by The Umbrella Academy, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Has PTSD, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves Needs Help, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, Multi, Other, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:53:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26240686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlerdoodler/pseuds/noodlerdoodler
Summary: Not only had his body been ripped from his own control, shaken so violently by tremors he felt his brain might fall out of his skull, but now his own stupid claustrophobia was kicking in. Acid scorched the back of his throat. Would the elevator chew him up into tiny Klaus-shaped pieces before it spat him out on the ground floor?He fixed Ben, who was looming over him, with a glare, “Can you just go away please, Casper? Go haunt an abandoned house or something? Whatever gets you off.”Luckily, his brother seemed to take his irritation at surface-level and jumped at the chance to phase away. Klaus had no idea where he was going and didn't care. It would be so much easier to fall apart, crumble into dust and let the wind blow him away, if nobody was watching. And god, if Klaus wasn’t about to become an absolute mess. They’d need to scrape him off the four walls of the elevator with a giant spatula when he was done.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Everyone, Klaus Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves
Comments: 9
Kudos: 185
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Boys Don't Cry

**Author's Note:**

> Bad Things Happen Bingo! The prompt was: clawing at own throat.
> 
> Heavily inspired by the Dallas comic and incorporated some of Klaus's story from that. 
> 
> All hurt, no comfort. Sorry :(

Nobody paid Klaus any attention as he slid down against the wall of the elevator, his knees too weak to hold him up anymore. He’d barely made it to the elevator in the first place and if Luther hadn’t heaved him to his feet and pushed him in the right direction, he wouldn’t have had a chance. Somehow, Ben crawling underneath his skin and forcing Klaus into a dark corner of his own mind had drained his energy quicker than any downer he’d ever taken. Though, if he understood it correctly, Ben had only had control of his body for a few seconds. Far too long.

“I feel so violated,” Klaus moaned, rubbing his neck. The skin no longer felt like his own, “I need a herbal bath. You had no right… to possess me.” 

Somehow, he had managed to peel the buttons of his shirt open to expose his pale skin to the air. The sensation of his body being hijacked left it feeling like it was burning all over, as if hundreds of hot ants were crawling underneath his skin. Like he was a witch at stake, being cooked to a crisp. It was relieving to feel the cold metal of the elevator pressing against his hands and feet- he’d kicked his shoes off triumphantly. Something about freeing his feet, so his toes could wriggle freely, had relieved a little pressure. 

If his siblings spared him a look, (which he doubted they would have done), Klaus didn’t notice. He was too preoccupied with the way the elevator seemed to be folding in on itself, growing smaller the longer he pleaded for it to stop. Not only had his body been ripped from his own control, shaken so violently by tremors he felt his brain might fall out of his skull, but now his own stupid claustrophobia was kicking in. Acid scorched the back of his throat. Would the elevator chew him up into tiny Klaus-shaped pieces before it spat him out on the ground floor? 

He fixed Ben, who was looming over him, with a glare, “Can you just go away please, Casper? Go haunt an abandoned house or something? Whatever gets you off.” 

Luckily, his brother seemed to take his irritation at surface-level and jumped at the chance to phase away. Klaus had no idea where he was going and didn't care. It would be so much easier to fall apart, crumble into dust and let the wind blow him away, if nobody was watching. And god, if Klaus wasn’t about to become an absolute mess. They’d need to scrape him off the four walls of the elevator with a giant spatula when he was done. Pulsing with dark and violent memories, his own mind turned on him. 

_”Klaus! Help us! Klaus!”_ The shrieks of the dead clawed at his ears, so loud that it felt as if they were trying to open up his throat and climb inside him. Maybe that was what was making so hard to breathe in here; all the oxygen had been stolen away by the ghosts and ghoulies, who wanted to pull him under with them. It felt like he was suffocating. They wanted him dead and buried and god, if he didn’t crave the exact same thing from time to time. Too bad the little girl kept sending him back here. 

Even though Ben was gone, therefore removing any possibility of future possessions, his body had startled trembling again. His skin was burning, (it seemed to be on fire), and long-forgotten screams rattled around inside his skull. There didn’t seem to be enough air in here. 

“Do you think he’s overdosing?” A voice murmured in half-hearted concern above him. 

The sensation wasn’t unlike the symptoms of withdrawal but cranked up to 100. Desperately, Klaus dug his fingernails into the skin of his neck and started scraping frantically in an attempt to get some oxygen into his lungs. He couldn’t breathe in here. Wow, he was going to be pissed if it was asphyxiation that finally killed him- not even the sexy kind. More than anything, he wanted to slide his nails under this skin which didn’t belong to him and peel the entire thing off. Despite what the hospitals had said about his struggling organs, Klaus was sure there was nothing but sadness and sorrow underneath. A kind of black mist. 

If he wriggled free of his skin, let it fall to the ground, he’d finally be able to escape. 

Panic overtook him as Klaus clawed relentlessly at his skin, trying his best to _just get it off, just get out of here, out of this body, out, damned spot, out_. His legs kicked out, trying to force his body upright as he slid further onto the floor and rasped for breath. He couldn’t remember the last time that this body had felt like apart of him, rather than just baggage he carried around with him. Maybe he could abandon it to rot in the elevator. 

As a little boy, the ghosts had clung to his small form and refused to let go of him. He couldn’t go anywhere without their hauntingly empty eyes bearing into him, eating him up silently. By the time he was eight, exposed to the horrors of the mausoleum, Klaus had taken to bathing in the dark and lying with his eyes shut under the water. He could hold his breath almost as long as Diego. Everyone teased him about his fear of monsters under the bed and he had laughed with them, pretending the corpses weren’t lying there in wait for him. 

Sometimes, the ghosts had crawled under the bedcovers with him and slipped between his ribs. They hid inside him, their cries pulsing in time with his heartbeat, and his body would feel heavy with all the pain he carried with him every day. Everyone always thought it was funny that Klaus had no qualms about wearing revealing clothes or whoring himself out for drugs, ( _classic Klaus_ everyone said), but the truth was that his body belonged to them already. It was all just waiting until they took his mind too. 

The elevator dinged and his siblings stalked away to lick their own wounds.

Klaus’s stubby fingernails had blood under them. 

“Come on, Klaus,” Somebody grabbed him by the ankle and tugged him out of the elevator, dragging him along the marble floor of the lobby. It felt refreshingly cool against his hot skin and the demons that crawled underneath and he let his arms fall limply at his side. Sensations of cold brushing against hot rippled through his body like lightning but none of it felt real, not even the huge hand gripping his leg. 

Even now that he was out of the metal box, claustrophobia continued to hang over him as if he was still locked away. He felt trapped in his own body, wishing that he was floating somewhere far away, and in his half-drunken stupor he resumed scratching at his own aching throat. Something felt wet, probably blood, but he didn't feel any closer to stripping off his skin like dirty laundry. Soulless eyes of the dead peered down at him, their faces leaping out at him from nowhere, and Klaus flailed his leg until his brother loosened his grip. It dropped heavily onto the floor. 

He got the sense that Luther, who was now standing next to him with a look of embarrassment on his face, hated that he was ‘making a scene’ in the lobby of the building. Curling in on himself, Klaus tried not to take it too personally when he remembered the way that their father had looked at them all upstairs. No doubt his little brother was still taking it badly.

It’s no fun being daddy’s favourite when daddy dearest is a monster.

Luther dropped into a crouch beside him and tenderly peeled Klaus’s hands away from his skin, “You’re only hurting yourself, Klaus. Nobody else.”

While he'd suspected he was bleeding, Klaus was still surprised to see his fingernails were bloody and raw. He had hurt himself, pretty badly if the stinging pain of fresh scratches on his neck were anything to go by. It had been a long time since he'd chosen this particular method of self-destruction. Pretty trendy in the 90s but Klaus had found his father's alcohol stash at the turn of the millennium and turned to stronger stuff after that. He wished he could tell Luther that he hadn't done it on purpose- that he'd just been trying to fight off his claustrophobia. 

Deep down, he knew he had wanted it to hurt, “Let’s go home.”

His brother nodded and released his hands, hoisting Klaus to his feet with ease. There was no arm wrapped around his shoulders or his waist, just his own shakes knees to support his weight. Hazy, his throat sore with scratches, Klaus stumbled out the doors and into the dim lighting of the parking lot. Under Luther's instructions, he flopped gratefully into the backseat of the car and paid little attention to his siblings bickering over the radio station. Of course, they didn’t pay any attention to him either.

He couldn't remember the last time a living person had cared about him. The cult didn't count- they worshipped an empty idol. 

Who cared about the stupid little junkie? At the table, they’d all just stood by as his body had been snatched from his hands and played with like a puppet. Ben had been pulling all the strings. Nobody had moved to help him as he’d shaken, his body jolting back and forth violently like he was having a seizure, or checked him for injuries when he’d keeled over onto the floor. He'd swallowed the strong urge to puke because he knew that they'd find it plain embarrassing rather than a cause for concern. An overdose, Diego had suggested, in spite of the fact that Klaus had been clean for three years now. It had always been that way.

They wrote off all his problems as being his own fault. He'd brought it all on himself, everybody liked to say. When he’d been kidnapped and tortured at that dingy motel, everybody had just assumed he was snorting crack somewhere.

“Fine,” Klaus muttered to himself, grateful his ghost brother had cleared off, “They want a junkie? I’ll give them a junkie. It’s not like I’ve gained anything from being sober… Everything’s been worse than ever. I just want to feel _numb_ again.” 

Rolling his head to the side, he stared out of the window as they pulled out of the parking lot. 

It had been easy enough to get a fix- plenty of his cult experimented with psychedelics and weed so it wasn’t hard to find someone, who knew someone, who had a dealer that dealt in stronger stuff. Stumbling from one place to another, everybody who saw him bleeding from self-inflicted wounds probably presumed he was already off his tits. There weren't any questions, just money and clear baggies exchanging hands. Somehow, Klaus had ended up at the Mother’s Of Agony house, on the edge of the city, which was more of a squat than it was a house. He knew it was for the lowest of the low. Broken glass littered the floor and he kicked an old needle away so that he could collapse onto a sagging couch. 

He wasn’t even really sure how he’d gotten here in the first place. After the elevator, it had all been a bit of a blur aside from the dull throb of blood clotting and scars forming on his throat. Looking in a foggy mirror, Klaus observed that it looked a lot like a wild cat had pounced on his throat and tried to rip it open. It had always surprised him and Ben in the past, (future?), how capable he was of hurting himself without even trying. Just thinking about Ben made him shudder and scratch his neck, encouraging the scars to ooze.

With shaking hands, Klaus tied his vein off just above the elbow and flipped his lighter open. It took a few clicks to get the flame going, melting the sticky brown heroin onto the spoon. In a weird way, it always reminded him of the syrup that he’d poured over his pancakes as a kid, which in turn reminded him of his mother and caused guilt to surface in his chest. For a moment, he thought about changing his mind. 

“Klaus, please don’t do this. Please don’t throw it all away,” Of course, like the little angel on his shoulder, Ben choose that moment to materialise in front of him again. He'd probably knock the spoon out of his hands if Klaus let his guard down. 

Not listening, Klaus poured the heroin into the needle and checked the point was sharp. How many more times could he hit rock bottom?

His brother tried hard, (and failed), to catch his eye, “You need to stay in control.”

“Well, you took care of that, didn’t you?” Klaus replied, so coldly it surprised him. 

Ignoring Ben’s murmured protests, he found his vein, marred by old scars, and expertly sunk the needle into it. The feeling of liquid gold racing through his blood was even better than he’d remembered it, numbing the pain of carrying this exhausted body around. After a few moments, Klaus felt much, much better than he had in the elevator. Instead of closing in, it seemed that the walls peeled backwards like the skin of an orange and there was finally enough air to fill his lungs. Relief washed over him waves, only to be replaced by a sense of glittering euphoria. The rush shot through his body and he closed his eyes, tipping his head back.

He relaxed onto the couch as if he was sinking into a pot of warm honey, letting the feeling of giddiness wash over his body. The itching, crawling sensation of being trapped in his own skin seemed to evaporate as if he had shed his body completely. It was like he was floating. As he drifted away into a world of his own, Klaus was vaguely aware of his dead brother repeating apologies into his ear.

With open arms, he embraced the darkness that enveloped him.


End file.
